Hoax Depot

A blog about discussions on various notable hoaxes that had sprang up over the centuries and why in the age of the Internet / Web 2.0 it still takes time and effort to confirm a hoax as such if it occurs.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Given his open mistrust of the “dishonest mainstream media”,
is Trump’s Swedish Massacre Hoax a sure sign that he’s already out of touch
with reality?

By: Ringo Bones

With the whole world still reeling after Kellyanne Conway’s
Bowling Green Massacre Hoax, people who are already questioning the sanity of
President Trump may had earned credence of their claims with the recent “Swedish
Massacre” tirade on Twitter as Trump tries to justify his anti-immigrant
stance. The Swedish Massacre Hoax was apparently invented by Trump during a
campaign-style rally of his supporters in an aircraft hangar in Melbourne,
Florida. When former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt Tweeted: “Sweden? Terror
attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound.” It wasn’t long that everyone
realized that Trump’s “Swedish Massacre Hoax” is about as real as his
presidency.

President Trump’s bizarre nonexistent terror attack on
Swedish soil may have been due to his rejection of other more reliable news
media in preference to a conservative far-right news channel called Fox News,
where the night before Trump’s Melbourne, Florida rally, he was watching a
documentary made by a right-wing demagogue claiming that Swedish crime rates
are on the rise because of the Swedish government relaxing its restrictions in
accepting Syrian war refugees in 2015. But the truth is crime rates across
Sweden had been in decline since 2005. Trump’s war on the “dishonest media” has
unforeseen consequences indeed. By often referring to CNN and the BBC, amongst
others, as “fake news”, it seems Trump has apparently lost all contact with
reality this time.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Given that it forms the bulk of her raison d’être of
U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s so-called “Travel Ban”, is Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling
Green Massacre Hoax a triumph of President Trump’s obsession with so-called “Alternative
Facts”?

By: Ringo Bones

Looks like U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s obsession with
so-called “Alternative Facts” had backfired when her former campaign manager
and current Counselor Kellyanne Conway during a press interview defending his
proposed “Travel Ban” – which is widely viewed as the notorious “Muslim Ban” – managed
to create the so-called “Bowling Green Massacre Hoax”, which allegedly,
according to Kellyanne Conway, is a result of a “slip-of-the-tongue”. Despite
of this press interview faux-pas, is Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre
Hoax has a kernel of truth contained in it?

Various small-town mom and pop bread-and-breakfast establishments
in the United States deep-south region had been quick to exploit the “tourism
potential” of Kellyanne Conway’s so-called Bowling Green Massacre incident, the
truth is the origin of the now famous “journalistic hoax of 2017” that have since
gone viral has a rather mundane origin. During Kellyanne Conway’s press
interview in defense of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s notorious “Muslim Ban”,
Conway cites an incident of a supposed massacre perpetrated by a group of “radicalized
Muslim-Americans” that happened in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

But the true origin of Kellyanne Conway’s “Bowling Green
Massacre Hoax” was the 2013 Justice Department announcing that it has sentenced
two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green, Kentucky to federal prison after
they confessed to attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq and assisting Al Qaeda in
Iraq by sending money and weapons. In truth, the so-called bloody massacre that
Kellyanne Conway cited as an example to defend U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s
notorious “Travel Ban” during a press conference actually never happened.
Unfortunately, the truth (or was it U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s so-called “Alternative
Facts”?) is still powerless to stop unscrupulous tour operators exploiting
Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre Hoax even if their town is only
coincidentally named Bowling Green - and not Bowling Green, Kentucky – for monetary
gain. In truth, Kellyanne Conway’s “Bowling Green Massacre” is about as real as
Gene Roddenberry’s Sino-Indian War.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Even though it no longer registers on the consciousness of
most everyday Americans this day and age, is the New York Sun’s Moon Hoax still
America’s greatest journalistic hoax?

By: Ringo Bones

Though many of his detractors associate former US President
George W. Bush’s search for nonexistent WMD’s in Iraq back in March 2003 as
America’s greatest journalistic hoax of the 21st Century due to the
death’s of 5,000 or so young Americans in their prime who undertook in such a
fool’s errand, many scholars cite that America’s greatest journalistic hoax
happened in the 19th Century. It may not have the tragic consequences
of the March 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom that still affect us to this very day
but, still, it did manage to hold that position for over a hundred years. But does the New York Sun's "Moon Hoax" still qualify as one of America's greatest if not the greatest of the journalistic hoaxes then and now?

Back in 1835, the New York Sun’s “Moon Hoax” had the claim
to fame as the most celebrated hoax in American journalism. It originally
consisted of a series of articles, allegedly reprinted from the nonexistent
Edinburgh Journal of Science, relating to the alleged discovery of life on the
moon by an eminent British astronomer. Through a then new and powerful telescope, the
scientist related, that he had been able to make out oceans, beaches, trees,
vegetation, bison and goats, cranes and pelicans – and, finally, furry, winged,
bat-like moon-men. By the time the fourth installment appeared, the New York
Sun – which had then the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world –
and rival editors, pretending to have access to the original articles, began to
reprint the “original” New York Sun’s series. But then the New York Sun’s
senior editor at the time named Editor Day admitted the hoax, which had been
originally authored by a bright young man on his staff named Richard Adams
Locke.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Even though this “name hoax” could not have gone viral but
is Facebook to blame?

By: Ringo Bones

Name hoaxes are not new and as history had told us they tend
to get a life of their own – just like Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus. But in today’s
fast-paced social media scene, can a social media platform, like Facebook, tend
to inadvertently give name hoaxes a life of its own as it goes viral?

A few days ago, an Australian man of Vietnamese descent who
made global headlines after saying he was fighting to use his “real name” on
Facebook, admits it was a hoax. The man had claimed Facebook would not allow
his real name as could be considered offensive. But he later said on Facebook
that his real name was “Joe Carr” (or perhaps Joker). He said what he started
as a joke between friends “became a prank that made a fool out of the media.”

But he said it also brought out the best in people and gave
encouragement to people with “truly interesting and idiosyncratic names”. The
hoaxer is of Vietnamese origin. His name was given as Phuc Dat Bich – which when
properly pronounced in the Vietnamese language, which is a tonal language, it
actually sounds like “Phoo Dah Bi”. At present, Facebook have not responded to
the BBC and other news organization’s requests for comment. Not to mention most people's lack of knowledge of the Vietnamese language also plays a part.

Ever since Facebook started, it has been used as a platform
for political satire criticizing how the Bush administration and other
right-leaning conservative groups conduct their “War on Terror” and how they
use religion and their almost unlimited monetary resources to ridicule
environmentalist crying out their concerns on climate change and global warming.
Such grassroots environmental and social justice movements managed to engender “idiosyncratic”
accounts on Facebook like Jesus Hitler Christ, GOP Jesus, Climate Change Jesus,
Global Warming Jesus, Crude Oil Jesus, White Supremacist Jesus, etc.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Is America’s post 9/11 education scene way different than
what has come before when a 14-year-old Arab-American high school freshman gets
arrested for being an electronics enthusiast?

By: Ringo Bones

During a typical Monday morning back in September 14, 2014,
a 14-year-old Arab American high school freshman of MacArthur High in Irving,
Texas named Ahmed Mohamad was arrested by the local police after his teacher
mistakes the clock that he had worked over the weekend and bought to his class’
show-and-tell for a bomb. Later investigation showed that the uproar over the
young electronic enthusiast accused of bringing a bomb to school that was later
revealed to be a “Hoax Bomb” was primarily racially motivated via the post 9/11
paranoia that is still gripping white Anglo Saxon conservative America, Ahmed
Mohamad was later invited by President Barack Obama to the White House and
given a commendation. Given the “politics” surrounding the incident, is the
post-9/11 paranoia harbored by white Anglo Saxon Protestant America hurting,
rather than helping, science education in America?

The political blowback of the “Hoax Bomb Case” incident made
Ahmed Mohamad to decide that he won’t be going back to MacArthur High anymore
after being singled-out due to his ethnicity. After all, there are white Anglo
Saxon Protestant high school students his age that were carrying loaded assault
rifles publicly in the name of the “Open Carry Law” elsewhere in Texas and
nobody dared to call them as “Christian Terrorists”? Which make one also ask if “White Supremacist
Jesus” is already the governor of Texas?

Is post the white Anglo Saxon Protestant Post 9/11 Paranoia
destroying the social fabric of diversity in America? Ahmed Mohamad could be a
case-in-point of this and it is also ruining the inclusiveness of science
education in America where kids of high school freshmen are seeing science
education as “uncool” thanks ot former US President George “Dubya” Bush. Ahmed
Mohamad’s exceptional abilities in digital electronics should have been
nurtured given that when I was his age back in the 1980s, was still learning
the rudiments of digital electronics –i.e. still learning about logic gates and
J-K flip-flops.